Criminalizing Abortion

Have all the debates you want about whether abortion is right or wrong. Should it be criminalized? With the new Bush court in place, we may soon be given new reasons to arrest people and throw them into freshly built jails.

In the same day (1) the Supreme Court announces it will consider whether Congress can criminalize ‘partial birth’ abortions and (2) South Dakota criminalizes abortions for the sake of instigating a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade. Doctors found guilty of breaking the law will be subject to fines of $5,000 or five years in prison.

I don’t know anyone who is strictly speaking pro-abortion. But to criminalize abortion is to attack a woman’s right to safely decide whether she will carry a pregnancy to term.

Sex ed, birth control, subsidized child care: these are the policies that will reduce abortions with freedom and dignity. Instead, we are being served an agenda hostile to sex ed, birth control, and child services (including cuts in children’s health insurance). Add to this mix the criminalization of abortion, and you get a full scale hostility to what we used to call human progress.–gm